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		<header>
			<h1>Structure of the church</h1>
			<p>Day 01482: <time>Thursday, 2019 March 28</time></p>
		</header>
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/03/28.jpg" alt="Construction" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="dreams">
	<h2>Dream journal</h2>
	<p>
		I can&apos;t remember much of my dream, but I recall the end.
		I was in a closed-off room, and my break just ended.
		I got up to leave and get back to work, and my Irish workmate from the waking world came into the room and shut the light off.
		I&apos;m not sure why, but they wanted to do whatever they needed to do in there in the dark.
		They and I get along really well, so I started making eerie sounds with my voice as I continued heading toward them and the door.
		That freaked them out a little, as they couldn&apos;t see me at all in the dark.
		They ended up grabbing my shoulder when I drew near enough, then turned on the light.
		We both had a good laugh about it.
		I guess even in my dreams, I mess with people.
		Heh.
	</p>
	<p>
		When I exited the room, another workmate told me it was time for my break.
		I had to explain that I&apos;d already been sent on break ten minutes ago, and had just gotten off.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="calendar">
	<h2>Web calendar</h2>
	<p>
		I forgot how little my <code>\st\y\calendar</code> class actually does.
		It used to be really complex and do a lot of heavy lifting, but I rewrote it to delegate most of the work to some of <abbr title="PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor">PHP</abbr>&apos;s built-in classes.
		It&apos;s certainly not half the code I&apos;ll need for my calendar.
		Additionally, after contemplating how to make events and marked date ranges work, I&apos;ve decided the cleanest way to make it work is to abstract the data management away using some sort of calendar store class, which will add to the code I&apos;ve got to write.
		The <code>\st\y\calendar</code> class has everything necessary to display a calendar page visually.
		The new <code>\st\y\calendar_store</code> class, on the other hand, will be able to process data relating to dates and ranges, but will have no understanding of how time should be displayed.
		Together, they should be able to power the calendar code.
	</p>
	<p>
		I&apos;ve got a pretty good idea how to implement ranges and one-time events in this class.
		For ranges, I&apos;ll probably save the data to each day individually.
		Ranges will mostly just be for colour-coding, so they&apos;ll change each day in the range to whatever colour I specify, or rather, set the class of the <code>&lt;div/&gt;</code> that represents the day to whatever class I specify and let <abbr title="Cascading Style Sheets">CSS</abbr> do it&apos;s thing.
		What baffles me is how to handle reoccurring events that happen off into the foreseeable future.
		For example, I&apos;d like to put my <abbr title="Eugene Unix &amp; GNU/Linux User Group">EUGLUG</abbr> meetings on the calendar.
		I don&apos;t want to specify an end date, and I might not want to specify a beginning date.
		Every Thursday at 19:00.
		That&apos;s all I want to write to the calendar.
		Perhaps that&apos;s too lofty of a goal though.
		Perhaps for now, I should stick to finite calendar events and maybe add indefinite continuations later if I figure out how.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="cassette">
	<h2>Cassette tapes</h2>
	<p>
		Marc With a C has a new pair of cassette tapes out, called <a href="https://marcwithac.bandcamp.com/album/the-obscurity-trilogy">(The Obscurity Trilogy)</a>.
		It comes with a download of the album, which is the combination of three other albums he&apos;s released.
		I like to have these extra albums in my collection, even if they don&apos;t get me any new songs.
		I guess I&apos;m just odd that way.
		It&apos;s fun to see their artwork in my collection though.
	</p>
	<p>
		Anyway, there&apos;s no option to just buy the digital version without the tapes, so I had to buy the physical cassette tapes, which I&apos;ll put on my shelf and never listen to.
		I don&apos;t even have a cassette player.
		There&apos;s apparently only one hundred copies of this pair.
		After that, the digital version probably goes away too.
	</p>
	<p>
		A lot of Marc&apos;s old albums have disappeared from his music sales account lately.
		Nearly all of his live work and nearly all of his covers are gone.
		There&apos;s only one album left of each.
		Several of his own original albums are gone too.
		I wonder what&apos;s up with that.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="religion">
	<h2>Religion</h2>
	<p>
		Today, we talked about the organisation of the church and the associated titles.
		We didn&apos;t actually cover the part I was most eager to talk about, but that&apos;s okay.
		I&apos;ll bring it up later.
		And we did discuss quite a bit.
		We discussed so much, in fact, that it made me really glad I got as much of my website update done yesterday as was physically possible.
		There just wasn&apos;t any time today to do more than necessary after writing about all that&apos;s happened today.
	</p>
	<p>
		As for church structure, Jesus is supposedly the head of the church.
		Of course, no one can actually see that, because Jesus is almost certainly imaginary.
		Under Jesus, they have the first presidency.
		The first presidency is made up of the president of the church along with his first and second counsellors.
		This pattern of groups of authority being made up of groups of three, with two positions being a first and second counsellor to the main position is repeated throughout the church.
		I didn&apos;t notice it at the time, but it might allude to the holy trinity.
		The president of the church is also know as &quot;the prophet&quot;, but as I&apos;ll get to in a bit, the church has fifteen main prophets.
		There might be other prophets as well, I&apos;m not sure, but there&apos;s definitely not only one.
		All three of the members of the first presidency bear the title of &quot;President&quot;.
	</p>
	<p>
		Beneath the first presidency is the quorum of the twelve apostles.
		These people bear the title of &quot;Elder&quot;, as do most of the rest of the positions in the church leadership.
		This group is supposed to mirror what Jesus set up while on earth.
		The twelve apostles and the three members of the first presidency are all considered to be prophets, seers, and revelators.
		As I said, there are at least fifteen prophets in the church.
	</p>
	<p>
		Below the quorum of the twelve apostles, there&apos;s the quorum of the seventy.
		Seventy what?
		Just seventy.
		These people too bear the title of &quot;Elder&quot;.
		Again, this group is supposed to mirror what Jesus set up on earth.
		Jesus too appointed a quorum of the seventy.
		However, there&apos;s one very big change: the modern church has <strong>*multiple*</strong> quorums of the seventy, each with seventy people that have nothing to do with the other quorums of the seventy.
		Jesus never did that.
		In each quorum of the seventy, there&apos;s a presidency of the seventy, made up of seven people.
	</p>
	<p>
		Beneath the quorum of the seventy, you have the bishopric.
		Beneath which quorum of the seventy?
		Do they each get their own bishopric underneath them?
		Is there one main bishopric and it&apos;s under all the quorums of the seventy?
		Or is the main bishopric only under one of the quorums of the seventy?
		I&apos;m not sure.
		I&apos;ll ask the missionaries about it later.
		Anyway, the bishopric is again made of of the bishop and the bishop&apos;s first and second counsellors.
		These people bear the title &quot;Bishop&quot;, and are, as the missionaries put it, in charge of managing the church&apos;s temporal needs.
		By that, they mean the church&apos;s actual needs that it has in this world, as opposed to spiritual needs.
		There&apos;s no such thing as spirits though, obviously, so the &quot;temporal&quot; needs are the only needs the church has, beyond leadership needs.
		The bishopric&apos;s also in charge of something called the &quot;bishop&apos;s storehouse&quot;.
		The bishop&apos;s storehouse is able to grant groceries to people in need, after they fill out an order form requesting them.
	</p>
	<p>
		Also beneath the quorum of the seventy, there are the main relief society, elder&apos;s quorum, Sunday school, young men&apos;s group, and young women&apos;s group, each of which are groups of three, made up of a president, along with a first and second counsellor.
		Some of these auxiliary groups are made up of women, but none of the higher-up leadership roles are allowed to be filled by women, because the church is sexist and doesn&apos;t allow women to hold the priesthood.
		The people in these groups are also given the title of &quot;Elder&quot;, except I think the women aren&apos;t.
		I&apos;ll ask the missionaries about that too.
		There was a lot of ground to cover, so I didn&apos;t ask as many questions as I honestly should have.
	</p>
	<p>
		It&apos;s worth noting at this point that there are no paid clergy in this church.
		Anyone with a full-time church duty used to be highly successful, but has now retired and is living of their savings.
		In order to reach a high-ranking position, you therefore need to be very well-off financially.
		For example, the current president is a former heart surgeon, and I think the missionaries said the previous president was the former editor-in-chief of a newspaper.
	</p>
	<p>
		I&apos;m not sure who is in charge at each level of the church.
		Maybe I should have asked.
		There were more important things to cover and I&apos;m only noticing the gaps in the explanations now that I&apos;m trying to explain the organisation of the church myself here.
		The above people are the church leaders at the general level though.
		Under the general level, you have leadership at the area level, and under that, you have leadership at the stake level.
		Beneath the a stake, you have branches and wards.
		The difference between a branch and a ward seems to mainly be one of size.
		A ward has at least one hundred members and has all it&apos;s leadership positions filled.
		A stake has no such requirements, and has less than one hundred members.
	</p>
	<p>
		Wards have their own copy of each of the six auxiliary organisations under the quorum of the seventy at the general level.
		That is, they each have a bishopric (with a bishop and two counsellors), a relief society (with a president and two counsellors), an elder&apos;s quorum (with a president and two counsellors), a Sunday school (with a president and two counsellors), a young men&apos;s group (with a president and two counsellors), young women (president and two counsellors).
		It seems that at this level though, the counsellors of the bishop don&apos;t have the title of &quot;Bishop&quot;, but instead the title of &quot;Elder&quot;.
	</p>
	<p>
		The priesthood is the power and authority to act in the godhead&apos;s name.
		And it seems about half the people in the church are able to get the priesthood if they&apos;re old enough.
		There are two main requirements to gaining the lowest levels of priesthood: you&apos;ve got to be old enough and you&apos;ve got to be a man.
		As I said, women aren&apos;t allowed to hold the priesthood in this church.
		The godhead is said to do everything through the priesthood, so if you look at what that actually means, the godhead does everything through the men.
		There are two main types of priesthood: the Aaronic priesthood and the Melchizedek priesthood.
		The missionaries at first described the Aaronic priesthood as the lesser priesthood, but later changed their wording and called it the preparatory priesthood, and asked that I change it in my notes, which I did.g
		From the sounds of it, it&apos;s both though.
		It&apos;s preparatory because it gets people used to some of the duties before they have to take on more, but it&apos;s also lesser, as people with this priesthood don&apos;t have as much power.
		The Melchizedek priesthood is the greater priesthood, and most of the adult men have it, from what I understand.
		Both main priesthood levels come with three sublevels.
		As you go up, each of the six levels of the priesthood builds on the former.
		You retain all the lesser powers as well as the lesser responsibilities.
		Additionally, if you break commandments, your priesthood is voided.
	</p>
	<p>
		On January first of the year a man turns twelve years of age, he&apos;s able to take on the office of deacon.
		Deacons are able to pass the sacrament at church.
		That&apos;s their primary responsibility.
		They also have stewardship over the church.
		They try to take care of the needs of the church where they can.
	</p>
	<p>
		On January First of the year a man turns fourteen years of age, he&apos;s able to take on the office of a teacher.
		Teachers lay out the bread and fill the water cups for the sacrament.
		Their job is to watch over the church and try to strengthen it.
		They see that there is no wickedness, lying, back-biting, or evil speaking.
		They see that the church meets often and that all members do their duties.
		I guess that means it&apos;s their job to make sure church meetings happen every Sunday.
		They&apos;re also supposed to warn everyone and invite them to come unto Jesus.
		In other words, they are to preach the word of the church and attempt to increase membership in the church.
		They&apos;re also supposed to assist the deacons when needed, which they can do because they hold all the power and the authority of a deacon.
	</p>
	<p>
		On January First of the year a man turns sixteen years of age, he can become a priest.
		They&apos;re authorised to preach and baptize, though from the sounds of it, teachers are able to preach too, so that&apos;s probably just a power carried over from the office of the teacher.
		Like I said, each office carries the duties and responsibilities of all the lesser offices as well.
		During the sacrament hymn, people of this level of priesthood break the bread into pieces, representing the broken body of Jesus during his atonement, then bless the sacrament after the hymn is through.
		The sacrament is also covered by a white veil, because apparently Jesus was covered by a white veil.
		When?
		I think they said it was after he was dead, when he was in the tomb, but I forgot to put that in my notes.
		Another job they hold is to visit each member of the church and try to get them to prey in secret.
		From the sounds of it, holders of this level of priesthood don&apos;t actually visit everyone though, and instead only help out some other group whose job it is specifically to do this.
		If you&apos;re a member of the church though, it looks like you are supposed to pray in secret and you get frequent reminders of that fact by visitors to your home.
		Priests are also able to ordain other priests, teachers, and deacons, and in the absence of any elders, they&apos;re able to lead the church meetings.
		They rarely actually lead the meetings though, as there&apos;s almost always a great many elders present.
		I was also told at this point that technically, whoever holds the highest-ranking priesthood is in charge of the meeting, and that it goes all the way down to the deacons, if no other priesthood-holders are present.
		I immediately realised that this meant that if there were no men over the age of eleven, this probably meant the church meeting couldn&apos;t be held.
		Like seriously, there could be a tonne of adult women present, but it wouldn&apos;t matter, they still couldn&apos;t hold their church meeting.
		That&apos;s pretty stupid, but I couldn&apos;t work up the nerve to point that out.
		I have pointed out how sexist it is that women can&apos;t hold the priesthood earlier during our talk though, so it wasn&apos;t like the missionaries didn&apos;t know I thought the church&apos;s structure is sexist.
		And finally, a priest is authorised to explain things.
		I think they&apos;re to explain things about the church and the scriptures.
	</p>
	<p>
		Starting on January First of the year a man turns eighteen years of age, he can become an elder.
		Elders don&apos;t take on the title of &quot;Elder&quot; unless they&apos;re working for the church full-time though.
		For example, the missionaries are full-time elders.
		Elders are supposed to conduct church meetings according to revelations from the godhead.
		They take the lead in all church meetings, except, as mentioned above, if someone even higher-ranking is present.
		Like priests, they can perform baptisms.
		However, there&apos;s an added twist: baptisms don&apos;t actually count unless you get confirmed as a member of the church; the confirmation &quot;seals&quot; the baptism.
		The confirmation is so important that if you wait too long between your baptism and your confirmation, you have to get re-baptised before you can get confirmed.
		Priests can perform baptisms, but they can&apos;t confirm you as a member of the church.
		However, an elder can confirm you, which involves physically placing their hands on your head.
		Elders also can grant someone a blessing through the same type of physical contact with their hands on the recipient&apos;s head.
		The two types of blessings are those of comfort and counsel and those of healing.
		However, blessings only work if the recipient believes they will, which raises two major red flags.
		First, that sounds like the placebo effect.
		Secondly, it sounds like whenever they don&apos;t work, you just blame the recipient and say they didn&apos;t believe strongly enough; they didn&apos;t have enough faith.
		Laying of hands like this can&apos;t be done on oneself, either.
		To be blessed, an elder needs to get the help of another elder.
		Additionally, the laying of hands is done when ordaining people to another level of the priesthood.
		If hands are not laid on your head, you don&apos;t receive the power and authority of the godhead.
	</p>
	<p>
		The final two levels of priesthood are that of the high priest and that of the apostle.
		You gain the high priesthood if you become a bishop, and retain it if you&apos;re become a stake president.
		I assume that you receive the apostle priesthood if you ever become one of the twelve apostles.
	</p>
	<p>
		Next, there are something called the priesthood keys.
		There are four varieties of them, and four people in each ward hold one of them.
		The keys grant you the authority to perform certain tasks, and they allow you to receive revelations on behalf of the group the key has authority over.
		The first three are the deacons&apos; quorum president key, which allows the holder to receive revelations about deacons within the ward; the teachers&apos; quorum president key, which allows revelations about the teachers, and the elders&apos; quorum president key, which allows the holder to have revelations about the elders.
		It seems the priests don&apos;t get someone to have revelations about them.
		And finally, there&apos;s the bishop key, which allows the bishop to have revelations about everyone in the ward.
		Strangely, the president of the church has all four keys.
		This seems redundant, as the bishop&apos;s key allows revelations about everyone in the ward, while the other keys allow revelations about only certain subgroups of the ward.
		Additionally, it sounds like the president is able to delegate the power granted by their four keys, but I might have just misunderstood that.
	</p>
	<p>
		With sexism abounding in this setup, the missionaries tried to justify it, claiming that it wasn&apos;t sexism, but instead a division of labour.
		A specialisation, if you will.
		Women are meant to love and nurture, they said.
		Men are meant to lead and provide, they said.
		Each gender has its place, so each is granted the position they&apos;re best able to fulfil.
		I pointed out that there exist both macho women and tender-hearted men, so the claim that this sexist system puts everyone where they&apos;re best able to use what they are is patently false.
		I think they understood, but they didn&apos;t really have a response for that.
		I also asked about me.
		First, I explained about how science has proven that men and women have different brain structures and that we queers don&apos;t have brains that are quite like either.
		I did that to make sure they understood that inside, I&apos;m not a man nor a woman, so I can&apos;t really be classified as either without ignoring my anatomy, which is exactly what people try to use to mis-classify me.
		They said they didn&apos;t know.
		They don&apos;t know where those that are gender fluid, as they called me, belong.
		I&apos;d hoped they would have covered the &quot;Brother&quot; and &quot;Sister&quot; titles, but they didn&apos;t.
		I think those titles belong to all members of the church.
		So what am I?
		I&apos;m neither man nor woman, so neither title fits me.
	</p>
	<p>
		They accidentally left their magazine at my place.
		I&apos;ll return it on Saturday if I see them.
		If not, I&apos;ll see them on Sunday.
		Since I had it in my possession, I decided to take a look at the section telling who all the people in office at the time the magazine was printed again.
		I thought I&apos;d double-check something.
		I think the presidency of the seventy is a part of the seventy people making up the quorum, but I&apos;m not quite sure.
		A quick head count (literally; the page shows a bunch of photos of people&apos;s heads) should have told me.
		However, in addition to the seven in the presidency, there are eighty-four people in the quorum.
		Perhaps I&apos;m just bad at maths, but I&apos;m not sure what combination of eighty-four and seven could ever add up to seventy.
		I&apos;ll have to ask the missionaries about that as well.
		They also sent me a video to watch explaining the roles of men and women in regards to the priesthood.
		There was no time to watch it today, but it should be interesting to see how the video tries to justify it.
		I&apos;ve also been invited to attend a couple baptisms, to see what happens during one.
		The first is one I&apos;ve got to work a shift through, but after learning that, they invited me to a sooner baptism that&apos;s going on this Saturday.
		That should be interesting.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		During the final exams today, I realised I could take notes.
		During previous terms, I&apos;ve forgotten what I&apos;ve had to say about the exams in my learning journal as I haven&apos;t had my laptop on me to take notes on.
		Having my laptop in the room with me might make it look like I&apos;m cheating, y&apos;know?
		However, I did have scratch paper, so I took notes on that.
		My scratch paper got confiscated at the end of the exams though.
		They don&apos;t want people taking notes on the questions and using them to help someone else cheat.
		The only cheating that could be done from my notes though would be to make sure to memorise Euler&apos;s number, which needed to be known due to lack of access to a calculator that had that number built in.
		When I asked if I could keep my notes, they didn&apos;t let me, but when I asked to see them again and copy them only my laptop (which was in the other room, outside the testing area), they let me.
		So I couldn&apos;t take the physical paper out, but I could still take my notes out.
		What a weird policy.
	</p>
	<p>
		Next term will be my last proctored term.
		I&apos;m going to try to avoid needing to copy my notes out.
		I need to find a better way to remember.
	</p>
	<p>
		Hilariously, at the bike rack I locked my bike to this time, there were several signs warning that if you didn&apos;t lock your bike up, it&apos;d get impounded.
		If you think the bike thieves will get your bike, you&apos;d better lock it up.
		However, if you&apos;re a more naïve and trusting person, you&apos;ve still got to lock your bike up to avoid losing it to the impounders.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="hair">
	<h2>Hair removal</h2>
	<p>
		While I waited for the missionaries to arrive, I did a quick Web search to see if the company running the clinic I&apos;m getting dietary lessons from also does <abbr title="light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation">laser</abbr> hair removal.
		They do!
		Or at least, their website claims they do.
		I couldn&apos;t be sure that that specific clinic offers the service until I biked in and asked, but if they did, that&apos;d be one less place for me to have to remember the location of.
	</p>
	<p>
		I couldn&apos;t remember where exactly the clinic was, only that I would need to return later for the dietary lessons.
		On the way to my final exams, I remembered that the clinic was actually very close by.
		I had to ask for directions, but after my exam, I made it there and asked.
		Apparently, the clinic&apos;s company doesn&apos;t offer <abbr title="light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation">laser</abbr> hair removal.
		Not only do they not offer it at that location, they supposedly don&apos;t offer it at all.
		Either the receptionist is misinformed, or the website lied to me.
		Either way, they&apos;re off the list of places to try.
	</p>
	<p>
		I did get a few leads that might get me the treatment I need.
		I&apos;m going to try again at the place that had no <abbr title="light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation">laser</abbr> technician first though.
		It&apos;s been a couple months, so maybe they&apos;ve hired someone.
		If not, I&apos;ll follow up on leads.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="chain">
	<h2>Bike chain</h2>
	<p>
		I was almost home when my bike chain locked up and I could no longer ride.
		The chain gets caught between the smallest gear and the frame of the bike.
		Normally, I can get it back out and keep going.
		In fact, it used to be that I wasn&apos;t sure why the chain was locked at all, so I jiggled the peddles until the chain got free.
		Lately though, I&apos;ve been stopping and pulling the chain out by hand.
		This time, the chain wouldn&apos;t come loose.
		I needed a wrench, which I didn&apos;t have on me.
		It was a block or two walk home from where my chain locked up, but it looks like I need to start carrying a wrench for when I&apos;m further out.
		I&apos;ve tucked one away in my purse so I don&apos;t forget it.
	</p>
</section>
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